“Lovesick, bitter and hardened heart. Aching, waiting for life to start”

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they’re hearing something other than what I’m hearing.

It’s incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

I used to edit myself. If something seemed super-simple I had to make it more complicated.

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I’ve been with all along, that’s where I really learn.

There’s so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you’re one thing, it’s hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

I’ve been lucky with the circle of people I’m playing with. We’ve played enough that there’s a language we talk with each other when we play.

“Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible.

For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being – old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

I do know the older I get, the more I’m referencing music I heard as a kid.

I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players.

Now I’m trying to let what’s in there come out and acknowledge where I come from. I’m trying to make it more. ..true.

To get to this place of a warrior’s courage, we must give up the stories that have ruled our lives and shatter the self-image we created to affirm our story.

You should never be so involved with your position/job that when the position is gone your entire self image is gone with it.

Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

What does it mean to be human? It means we are created in the image of God for the glorious reality of being in permanent fellowship with Him.

A low hum. Vibration when it hits the skin. An image. Permanent art. But the most satisfying part is- the decisive-ness. Decision made.

There are studies that tell us that stress and lack of self-image, lack of self-esteem, severe dieting, binge dieting and binge eating can also be very damaging to a body and bring on various kinds of abnormalities.

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?